About a year ago, a client requested that I add a few neon effects to an ad I had created for them. I was under a tight deadline and the client didn't want to wait for me to experiment and come up with a bitmap neon effect, so we settled for vector neon from CorelDraw. Well, I've been fiddling on and off with the effect ever since and have figured out a better way to do it in Photo-Paint. 

 This is a neat effect, but there are a lot of steps to follow. So, get ready to turn on Photo-Paint's Recorder, follow along carefully, and I'll meet you at the end. I used Photo-Paint 7 for this article, but you can download the Photo-Paint 7 and 8 scripts from here. 

Note: For many of the steps, I give a sequence of keyboard shortcuts to accomplish a task. First you'll open a menu with the Alt combination given, and then hit the letters that follow to reach the dialog needed.

Turn On the Lights

To begin, create a white, 300 dpi RGB image large enough to surround the object you wish to "neonize" with a bit of white space around the borders. The important part is to start with a resolution of 300 dpi, even if your end result is for screen display. Many of the steps recorded in your script will not work properly on lower resolution images, and you can always resample the image later.

Next, reset the paint and fill colors to their default values (Alt+E) so your object will be black. If you will be using this effect on text, be sure the option Render to Mask is turned off (the option can be toggled on and off on the Property Bar when the Text tool is selected). If you will be applying this effect to a non-text object, switch to Layer Mode on the Objects roll-up and create a new layer.

Select the Text tool, set your text options as described below, and type your text. Or create a black-filled simple shape on the new layer you just        created.

Although the example appears to be text, it is actually Corel Magazine's logotype, which has been scanned and turned into a new layer. Choose text and/or objects similar in structure to this example: bold sans serif typefaces set at high point sizes or simple geometric shapes.

It is important that your figure either has a large type size or has thick lines so it will correspond with the settings in this tutorial. One suggestion would be Vag Rounded Bold from Corel's font collection set at 65 points. After you've worked your way through these instructions a time or two, you will get a better feel for which point sizes and fonts work best.

All right, the Recorder is active and it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty. With Preserve Image selected from the Property Bar (Ctrl+Q to toggle), create a mask from the black object (Ctrl+M). Save this mask to a channel (Alt+K,S,A) as Alpha 1. Reduce the mask by 8 pixels (Alt+K,H,E) and turn off visibility for the background on the Objects roll-up (deselect the eye icon). Invert the mask (Ctrl+I). If you have both the object and mask marquees active, your image should resemble the figure.

Invert the mask (Ctrl+I). If you have both the object and mask marquees active, your image should resemble the figure. 

With Preserve Image deselected, create an object from the mask (Ctrl+UpArrow) and then create a mask from the object (Ctrl+M). Save this mask to a channel as Alpha 2. Turn on visibility for the background on the Objects roll-up and invert the mask (Ctrl+I). Clear the masked area (Alt+E,A).

Load mask channel Alpha 2 (Alt+K,L). Fill the masked area with Black (Alt+E,F). Flatten the image (Alt+O,B,A) and unlock the background. Remove the mask (Ctrl+D) and Invert the image (Alt+I,M,I,).

Apply a Gaussian blur with a radius of 5 (Alt+C,B,G).

Load mask channel Alpha 2 and apply a second Gaussian blur, this time with a radius of 9.

 Note: It's more important that  your blur effects resemble the results shown here, rather  than copying these exact settings.